To dissolve, submerge, and cause to disappear the political or governmental system in the economic system by reducing, simplifying, decentralizing and suppressing, one after another, all the wheels of this great machine, which is called the Government or the State. --Proudhon, General Idea of the Revolution

11 Comments:

rj said...

Good to see arguments in favour of mutual insurance and other non-state alternatives to the welfare state.

A British conservative journalist wrote a book (The Welfare State We're In) about the rise of the British welfare state and how it effectively crowded out and and destroyed the old friendly societies and similar organisations. It contained some very interesting statistics re provision of health and education before the modern welfare state i.e. it was nearly comprehensive.

josh: The financial crisis is beyond my competency to make an informed comment. My gut feeling is that these "bailout" packages just involve shifting liabilities from the financial system to the state, so that the financial system will be temporarily stabilized at the expense of greatly worsening the "fiscal crisis of the state." The overall resource and input crises of the state capitalist system are worsening, and shifting them from one subunit to another won't do much good.

One possibility is that the state will try to solve its own fiscal problems by printing currency, and thus avoid any abrupt crash, but that inflation won't cross the threshold from high inflation to Weimar German-style hyperinflation. And then increasing dissatisfaction with the official currency will lead to adoption of local currencies and barter taking up the slack. I'm hoping there will be a "soft crash" without too much dislocation at the transition point.

Hey, Kevin, long time, no talk. I can't possibly absorb this quantity of information on a computer screen. I'm counting the days 'til I can read this on paper, or at least I would, if there was a deadline of some sort.

What if Kevin said that nothing he's ever said has ever been contradicted by this recent bs 'Austrian-economics' implosion?That would sound pretty sound to me.In fact I can't think of a better time for really free-market socialist dialogue!Marx is dead and Hayek is dead and Kevin carson is looking very fucking healthy!( pro2etc )

The term "bubble" and "bubble burst" has been used to describe financial meltdowns as far back as the early 1700s. Never has it been so accurate as today, in that a bubble is a shiny something of no substance and incredibly fragile.

In Daily Kos, his contributor Devils Tower posted an article today concerning the Bretton Woods conference and its unilateral repudiation by Nixon. ( There is no person in politics today with the cojones to take a similarly radical step to completely reform the US currency. So we are stuck chasing bubbles....

I must update my earlier comment about the need for a new "Bretton Woods" conference. As a commentator on NPR stated this past Wednesday, such a conference now seems inevitable. The conference Bush is calling shortly after the elections is not likely to be such a radical discussion. Instead, such a conference is likely to take place next year, once there is a bit of perspective on the current meltdown of leveraged banking.

Mutualists must have a place at this table. If not, it will simply be a reworking of the status quo. Indeed, advocates of many other economic systems currently out of fashion must have their feet under the table.

In reality, I doubt this will happen, any more than Green Party, Libertarian Party, and other "non-mainstream" candidates were permitted in the recent round of presidential debates in the US. As an alternative, perhaps at the same time mutualists and our allies might convene their own conference to put forward a viable way out of the mess we are in. Perhaps it would not be the clarion call that changes the world: as Kevin said in Studies in Mutualist Economics, the change in economic systems will not happen at the push of a button. But we must organize and go forward in a single direction. Our own "Bretton Woods" conference might be a place to determine a mutual (pardon the pun) starting place.

Stephen, it's interesting you mention the Green Party. As an active member (I know, some anarchist!), I've been pushing for a better definition of Green Economics. At long last, that's starting to happen, at least in my state. We are reaching out to labor activists, and I will be trying to make them part of that effort. These are the kinds of people we need to be discussing how to re-make the economic system, not the people who botched it up in the first place.

Congrats on working on the new book. I enjoyed the first. It brought me from a strict collectivist anarchism to a more free market view, which eventually led me to where I am today, libertarian conservative, probably to your horror lol.

A few years ago I wrote a review of an article from LewRockwell.com which I guess I sent the link to you and you commented. I have re-reviewed it and wish to to know your opinion on my new criticism when you have the time.

Jordan: Thanks much. I think you've got Dilorenzo's number. It amazes me that he can be so contrarian in politics on things like the coup of 1789 and the civil war, and yet such an apologist for a corporate economy that grew directly out of Hamiltonian and Whig policies and the "Great Barbecue."